Visualizing Economic Complexities

By W.J. Hennigan
April 3, 2009 03:56 PM

When The Washington Post folded its business section into the front of the newspaper last week, the very same day it unveiled an expansion of its online business page.

That’s not a coincidence. It’s a sign of the times.

News organizations are relying more heavily on new media to explain the complexities of the economic landscape. For example, Slate unrolled TheBigMoney.com, a new site featuring podcasts and video. And National Public Radio set up “Planet Money,” a multimedia project covering global economics.

Laura Conaway, editor of “Planet Money,” said the financial meltdown needs to be explained simply to the everyday person.

“Planet Money” revolves around a reporting team that draws on content from a wide range of sources for its blog, Twitter feed and podcast. The team sets out to post material that is “economically smart, but not economically dull.”

“The goal is to simplify the economic situation,” Conaway said. “We want to have an ongoing conversation with our audience.”

In February, “Planet Money” posted a video on its blog that was created by Jonathan Jarvis, a graduate student at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif.

The video, “The Crisis of Credit Visualized,” condenses the multifaceted mortgage collapse into an easy-to-follow 11 minute narrative.

By using symbols to represent financial instruments like collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps, and using pictograms to represent borrowers and lenders, Jarvis tells a simple story out of an otherwise convoluted state of affairs.

“One of the strengths to the approach is that it’s universal,” Jarvis said. “People can associate the graphics with one another, see the relationships form and then follow the overall story.”

The result is a video that’s been viewed about 2 million times on video sharing sites, Vimeo and YouTube, as well Jarvis’ site.

Jarvis said designers wishing to work in new media now have to be a hybrid: “part designer, part analyst and part journalist.”

“The Crisis of Credit Visualized” is a great example of translating a complex issue into an understandable form, said John Carroll, a media analyst and journalism professor at Boston University College of Communication. He said it is a mixture of information and entertainment that resonates with viewers.

“People in traditional media are looking to use technology in a way that maximizes the message,” he said.

Carroll said The New York Times is a first-class model of a publication that adapts economic content to the Web. The Times has a variety of financial and economic blogs, including DealBook and Freakonomics. It also offers an array of new multimedia tools that help visitors find out more about the economic downturn.

Lawrence Ingrassia, Times business editor, announced “the beginning of a major reinvention of our online Business and Technology sections” in September 2008. The overhaul included enhancements to the Small Business, Personal Technology and Your Money sections. In addition, the publication added new tools and multimedia features throughout its online and mobile business pages.

The Times has done well mixing in the new features, said Omar Gallaga, a technology culture reporter at the Austin American-Statesman. Gallaga said that by utilizing new media tools, publications are creating more engaged audiences.

“Readers are becoming more tuned in with their publications and feel invested in what’s going on in the newsroom,” he said.

Most news organizations are still trying different ways to reach their audience, Gallaga said. Some are looking to social networking sites, but whatever the method, publications know they need to go beyond the print product and into new media to connect with their audience. It’s just a matter of finding what works the best.

“Eventually, there are going to be ways of telling stories through new media that people just expect,” he said.

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Copyright © 2009 Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism